Race

Hitler didn’t actually snub Jesse Owens at the 1936 Olympics, but the story is too good not to tell, so “Race” tells it anyway — adding the (true) detail that Owens was snubbed back home. By someone called “the White House,” because this supposedly truth-telling movie can’t bear to spell out the words Franklin D. Roosevelt.

So “Race” is disappointing in parts, but Stephan James makes for an appealing star as the athlete who was born into an Alabama sharecropper’s family, tied a world record while still in high school, and went on to win four gold medals in a stadium full of white supremacists. It took some adjustment for Owens to get used to Berlin: The athletes’ dorms weren’t segregated as they were back home.

That kind of detail is what’s most welcome about “Race,” a film directed by Stephen Hopkins (“Predator 2”) that makes an honest attempt to question whether Hitler’s attitude toward blacks was much different from that of many Americans. Owens, under the tutelage of his Ohio State track coach (Jason Sudeikis), grapples with whether he’s supporting the Third Reich by attending the Games, which the NAACP requested he skip. It’s Owens’ sullen, bitterly experienced father (Andrew Moodie) who has the best answer to the conundrum: It will hardly kill racism if Owens stays home.

More of Owens’ relationship with his dad should have made it into the film, which is inspiring enough but skims the surface of its hero. Unlike the 2013 Jackie Robinson film “42,” “Race” presents Owens as all but unsullied by the toxic air around him. He doesn’t get angry with the racists, never considers fighting back, remains poised and genial. When ex-Olympic runner Larry Snyder (Sudeikis) advises Owens to simply tune out all the bitter talk around him, he does so.

I tend to think it was more complicated than that, and anyway, the gruff-but-loving coach character is pure cliché. He’s the guy who goes on a bender when worried about Owens, the one man in the crowd who rises to his feet when Jesse is racing, the guy who says, “You win up here,” while tapping Owens’ forehead. Really? How many gold medals did Thomas Edison take home?

Owens was a world-class athlete before he went to college, and Coach’s advice was Racing for Dummies stuff like, “Don’t look at the other guy when running.” The film would have been wise to find more opportunities to subvert cliché instead of indulge it, as it does in the beautifully ironic moment when Coach barks, “Can you work?” Owens’ reply: “I was picking 100 pounds of cotton a day when I was 6 years old.”